HOCKEY

HOCKEY; N.H.L. and Players Agree! On Where to Hold Their Next Meeting

By MURRAY CHASS

Published: October 4, 1994

They weren't debating the shape of the table, but the principals in the National Hockey League labor negotiations seemed to have a bit of a difficult time agreeing yesterday on a site for their meeting today. That sort of problem doesn't bode well for their chances of reaching an agreement that will trigger the start of the season in 11 days.

On what was supposed to be the fourth day of the season, N.H.L. Commissioner Gary Bettman and his aides will meet at league headquarters in Manhattan at noon with Bob Goodenow, the union leader, and assorted players.

They reached agreement -- now that's a unique concept -- on the site, people on both sides said yesterday, after Goodenow expressed reluctance to come to New York and Bettman said he didn't think it would be a good idea to go to Toronto, where the union has its offices.

"Bettman is concerned about the people there," said a management person, referring to the commissioner's safety concerns prompted by the heated reaction of some players and many fans to the lockout, which has delayed the start of the season.

As if the fans, who in Canada are more fanatical about their national sport than baseball fans are in the United States, haven't been enraged enough, the angry comments of some players have fueled their passion and created greater hostility.

"They hate Bettman because they view this as engineered by a hardhead who was brought in from the outside, from basketball, as a salary cap man," a person on the players' side, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity, said about some players. "They feel he doesn't know anything about hockey."

Goodenow said he had requested that the bargaining session be held in Toronto because of "the complexities about a couple of things, like with players."

The two sides last met in Toronto, last Monday and Tuesday. Two days later the union proposed beginning the season on time with pledges of no strike and no lockout. The next day Bettman reserved response to the proposal, saying he was postponing the start of the season for two weeks. The pace of negotiations during that time, he said, would determine whether the league accepted the union's idea.

That pace isn't expected to get off to a meteoric start.

"Should there be great expectations?" Goodenow, speaking by telephone from Toronto, asked in response to a question. "That remains to be seen. It depends on the flexibility of the league."

Asked about the league's view of the meeting, Arthur Pincus, vice president for public relations, said, "We are ready to talk and make a deal."

In reality, though, neither side is ready to make a deal on the level the other would require. They remain as far apart as their counterparts in baseball, and that dispute has taken the players' strike into what otherwise would have been playoff time.

Today is the 54th day of the baseball stoppage, and it was supposed to be the first day of the playoffs. The first games of the new round of playoffs, the one involving wild-card teams for the first time, would have been played today and tomorrow. Instead, major league baseball is at a standstill, its officials and players not even knowing if they will be ready to open next season April 2.

It is nearly a month since the baseball negotiators met, and they have no date scheduled for their next meeting. Bud Selig, the acting commissioner, conducted a telephone conference call for owners yesterday, primarily to provide an update on non-events.

In the baseball dispute, the owners stand behind their salary cap proposal and the players cling to their plan for a tax on payrolls and revenues of the top 16 clubs in each.

In hockey, the owners, insisting they don't want a cap, have a payroll luxury tax on the table, while the players have proposed a tax on payrolls and gate receipts of the 16 teams with the highest revenues.

If there's any optimism for a settlement that would allow an Oct. 15 opening of the N.H.L. season, consider some views expressed yesterday by people on both sides.

"The players won't accept a cap or a luxury tax," said a person who isn't with the union but is close to many players. "They'll talk about a payroll tax. The players have worked their way to high ground. The owners are looking bad right now, so they better show a willingness to talk about these things."

A person on management's side said it was imperative that the players agree to a system that would have an impact on player salaries. The salary escalation, he said, has outpaced the increase in revenues so badly something has to be done to correct the imbalance.

Asked how resolved he thought the players were, the person said: "We don't know what's going to happen until they start missing paychecks. Time is running. We'll see."

Some management people in baseball said they thought the players would end their strike after they missed one paycheck, maybe two. They missed three paychecks and remained on strike.

"I'll be delighted to see this settled within the next 30 days," one N.H.L. club official said yesterday, "but I won't be surprised if it's not settled until late into the winter."

Photo: The N.H.L. Players Association's Bob Goodenow talking to the news media Saturday. (Phill Snel for The New York Times)